The low energy frontier: probes with photons

Abstract

I discuss different aspects of the phenomenology of hypothetical sub eV mass particles arising in the context of extensions of the standard model. I focus on a simple extension based on an additional U(1) gauge symmetry and its corresponding gauge boson, called ``hidden photon''. Kinetic mixing with the standard photon leads to photon-hidden photon oscillations that are searched for in laboratory experiments like ALPS at DESY. Hidden photons produced in the interior of the Sun could be also detected in axion helioscopes like CAST at CERN and could play an interesting role in late cosmology, where the presence of additional feebly interacting relativistic particles seems to be favored. All these effects disappear as the hidden photon mass decreases, allowing phenomenologically large kinetic mixings. However, in this case such a hidden photon will even play a role in gauge coupling unification.